Still there was no response. His gaze lanced hither and thither like a
swallow. If a bee crawled from a foxglove bell, he noted it: if a spider
swung on a glistening thread, he saw her as, spinning, she sank. If a
woodlark stirred, he saw the shadow of its wing flit from frond to
frond. But of Oona, no trace.
"Oona, my fairy! Oona, my fawn! I didn't mean it! I didn't mean it! The
words were in my throat. I couldn't help it. Not a word was true. Oh, my
grief, my grief! Oona mùirnean, Oona mo mùirnean--Ochone, ochone,
thràisg mo chridhe--darling, darling, oh, 'tis my heart that is
parched!"
But the child was obdurate. She made no sign. Nial lay moaning on the
branch. The silence was unbroken, save by the sea-like whisper of the
wind among the leaves.
Suddenly a cushat crooned. Then the low croodling sound palpitated upon
the warm sunlit air that flooded in among the pine-boughs.
The dwarf listened. The gloom in his eyes lifted. He knew how Oona loved
his one utterance that was his own, which he had made in imitation of
the crooning of a dove. Raising his head, he half mumbled, half sang:
"_Oona, Oona, mo ghràidh,
Oona, Oona, mo ghràidh,
Mùirnean, mùirnean, mùirnean,
Oona, Oona, mo ghràidh!_"
Surely she would respond: ah, yes, that shrill mocking laugh, elfin
sweet in his ears! His gaze leaped along the track of the sound, and
then at last he espied her, crouching low in the fork of a rowan, with
her bare legs hidden by the bole and only the sparkle of her eyes
glinting from behind the screen of leaves.
"Ah," he cried joyously, "I see you, Oona, my dove! Ah, my little white
dove, your little black dove sees you!"
Oona drew herself up, leaped to a lower branch, and sprang to the
ground.
"Cha'n ann de mo chuideachd thù, cha'n ann de mo chuideachd thù, ars an
colman," she cried mockingly: "You are not of my flock, not of my flock,
said the dove!"[6]
[6] A pretty and common onomatopœic saying, which I remember first
hearing as a lullaby, when I was a child of three or four.
And with that she spread out her yellow hair with her hands, and went
dancing and leaping through the bracken. Onward she flickered like a
sunbeam, till she came to a rocky declivity, where she stopped abruptly,
and stared intently into the hollow beyond her.
Turning, she looked to see if Nial were watching her, and when she saw
that he was still on the swaying pine-branch, she cried eagerly:
"Look, Nial! Look!"
"What is it?" he cried, nearly toppling from the bough in his eagerness.
"What is it, Oona? What is it?"
"It must be your soul, Nial! It's black and wriggling about, in case you
catch it! _Bi ealamh! Bi ealamh!_ Be quick, be quick!"
Then, with a spring, she leaped out of sight. Nial stared after her for
a moment, caught his breath spasmodically, crawled swiftly back to the
tree, half clambered, half fell to the ground, and then ran like a
leaping goat toward the place where Oona had disappeared.
When he reached the ridge of rock which overhung the hollow he stopped,
trembling like a reed in a wind-eddy. At last! At last! Was he to find
his soul at last? Black or white, fair to see or uncouth as himself,
what did it matter, if only his long quest were now to be rewarded?
Shaking as in an ague, he crawled forward on his belly, till his shaggy
head projected over the ledge. At first he could not see, for the
passion in his heart had filmed his eyes.
Then at last he stared down into the greenness. He could see nothing.
Not a wild bee fumbled among the moss, not an ant crawled along a spray
of grass.
What did it mean?
Was it possible that Oona could see what he could not? Here, perhaps,
was his tragic sorrow: that his soul might often be nigh, but was
invisible to him.
With a hoarse exclamation, half scream, half call, he cried to Oona to
come to him. He had a name for her which he had adopted from Murdo the
shepherd, and by this he called her now. "Bonnie-wee-lass,
bonnie-wee-lass, come to me! Oona, mùirnean, Oona-mo-ghràidh, come to
your poor Nial! Oh, my soul, my soul, it will be lost! Oona, it will be
lost! Quick, quick, bonnie-wee-lass!"
But no answer came. There was no sign of the girl. She might be hiding
near, or be already far away, perhaps croodlin' back to the doves in the
middle of the forest, or chasing dragonflies by the tarn, or out upon
the hillside flitting from rock to rock like a butterfly, or singing and
springing from gale-tuft to heather-tussock, as a green lintie in the
sunlight. "O lassie, lassie, where is my soul, where is my soul?" he
cried, despairingly.
Suddenly his own curses came back to him, terrible on Oona's unwitting
lips.
"_Gu ma h-olc dhuit, Nial! Gu ma h-olc dhuit!_ A bad end to you too,
Nial-without-a-soul, and I'll be telling my father, I will, that you
laid your curse on me: ay, and I will also be telling Sorcha too, and
Murdo, and Alan, and the dogs; and I'll whisper it to the wind, so that
it'll tell the Green Lady of the Hills; and if I meet your soul I'll
tell it, so that it may be ashamed of you, and go and drown itself in a
peat-hole."
Nial listened, quivering. His eyes strained as a crouching hound's.
At last he spoke.
"I was mad, Oona. Forgive me. I see your voice coming from behind that
rock. Will you not return and show me my soul?"
"Look in the hollow of the stone beneath you, silly Nial!" came the
child's voice mockingly.
Nial stared; then, descrying nothing, leaped into the hollow. The next
moment he recoiled with a look of horror.
An adder lay in a little ferny crevice at the base of the rock. Its
writhing black body was trying to get out of sight, but could not. An
adder was the one thing in nature that the outcast could not bear to
look at. It gave him a horror, that at times moved him to frenzy, at
times made him flee as a man accursed.
Now he stood as one fascinated. If the _nàthair_ had wriggled toward him
he would have stood motionless.
With a heavy swaying motion of his head he muttered:
"_Anam nathrach, Anam nathrach!_"[7]
[7] "Serpent-soul, serpent-soul!" Pronounce àn' ŭm nàa-rach.
_Nathrach_ is the genitive of _nàthair_ (pronounced _nha_'er, or
a'_er_ nasally).
But when the adder saw a crevice elsewhere, that promised better, and
swiftly wriggled to it, Nial saw that it was only a crawling beast, this
and nothing more.
With a dart like a hawk he seized it by the tail, swung it round his
head while he shouted, "_Droch spadadh ort! Droch spadadh ort! Bad death
to you! Bad death to you!_" and flung it against the face of the rock,
so that when it fell across a bracken it lay as though stunned or dead.
A shout of elfish laughter came from Oona, who had sprung from her
covert, and watched Nial's discomfiture with malicious glee. He turned
slowly. His corrugated brows were knitted grotesquely, as with dull
bewildered eyes he stared in the direction of the laughter. With a
furtive motion he kept shifting his weight now to one foot, now to
another, occasionally dragging one backward as though pawing the ground.
His tormentor knew well these signs of perplexity, and her light
tantalizing glee rippled afresh across the glade. She stood knee-deep in
bracken, with her right hand clasping the black-and-silver bough of a
birk: a golden-green hue upon her from beneath from the sunlit fern;
upon her from above a flood of yellow sunshine, so that she stood out
like a human flower, a new daffodil of the woods.
The wild, rude, misshapen creature who fronted her seemed less human now
than his wont, with that bovine stare, that uncouth guise, his
over-large and heavy head slowly swaying, his restless stamping and
scraping. Suddenly it dawned upon him that Oona had not been in earnest:
that she had played with, and now mocked him. His eyes grew red, as
those of wild swine do of a sudden, or as those of an angry badger. A
spray of froth blew from his hanging lip. His long horny fingers opened
and closed like sheathing and unsheathing claws.
The next moment there stirred in his brain the thought that perhaps,
after all, Oona was mocking him because he had lost, perhaps even
because he, he himself, had destroyed his long-sought and moment-agone
found soul.
With a cry he threw himself on the ground, sobbing convulsively. He lay
there like a stricken beast, a quivering ungainly heap. It was no
unknowing beast, though, that moaned, over and over, "_My soul--my
soul--my soul!_" Great tears, like a stag's, ran down his furrowed
cheeks. Oona stood amazed. Here was no frenzy of blind rage such as she
had seen at times in her companion; but passionate grief: sobs, tears.
The child shivered. God surely has the tendrils of a child's heart
close-clinging to his own. Perhaps the wind murmured to her, _My grief!
my grief!_ Perhaps the leaves whispered, _Sorrow, O sorrow!_ Perhaps the
blind earth breathed, _My gloom!, my gloom!_ Perhaps the laughing
sunlight sighed, or the wild bees crooned, or the doves moaned, _Peace!
peace! peace!_ Oona's eyes grew dim. A trembling was upon her, like that
of a bird in the hollow of the hand. Like a bird, too, was her heart:
sure, the flutter of it was an eddy of joy in heaven.
She came toward Nial with swift, noiseless step. He did not hear her
approach; or if his wildwood ear caught a rustle, he did not look up.
The first he knew of her was the stealing of a small arm round his neck:
then the pressure of a warm body against his side: then a wisp of
fragrant yellow hair tangled with his coarse, shaggy fell, a soft cheek
laid against his, a hand like a little white hovering bird caressed his
face. Sweetest of all, the whisper that stole into his dark brain as
moonlight: "_Nial, darling Nial!_"
His sobs ceased. Only his breath came quick and hard. His whole body
panted, quivered still.
"Forgive me, Nial! dear, good Nial! I did not mean to hurt you so. I
was angry because of your words. But I--I--didn't really mean that
_that_ was your soul. Nial, Nial, I didn't see your soul at all!"
Slowly he lifted his wet inflamed face: his eyes agleam through the
tangled locks that fell over his brows.
"Have you _ever_ seen it, Oona?"
He could just hear the whispered _No_. A deep sigh passed her ears, and
she pressed closer to his sorrow.
"Oona, my fawn, do you think you'll ever see it? Do you think I'll find
it some day?"
"Oh, yes, Nial! Yes--yes--yes!"
"And you will help your poor ugly Nial to--to--find it?"
"Sure, it is helping you I will be, with all my heart, Nial-a-ghràidh."
He stooped his head over hers, lightly shoved her back, and kissed her
sunshine-hair. She raised an arm and pulled his face to hers, and kissed
him gently.
A faint smile, a glimmer of sunlight on a wet, dishevelled road, came
over his face.
Oona sat back, relieved, but with questioning eyes.
"Are you _sure_ you have no soul, Nial? Not even a small dark one that
will grow some day, and be beautiful, just as _you_ will,
when--when--you die?"
"I am sure, birdeen. Ask Màm-Gorm, ask Sorcha, or Alan, or Murdo, or any
of the people down yonder. They know. And _I_ know, when I look in the
tarn, or in the pool below the Linn o' Mairg, or in smooth water
anywhere: ay, and when the deer come to me, or the sheep do not stir out
of my way, or the kye come close and breathe on me kindly. No bee will
sting me, and the dragonflies, that even _you_ can't catch, rest
sometimes, as the moths do, on my head or arm."
Oona kneeled, and bade the dwarf do likewise. Then she told him that his
evil might be because of a _rosad_ upon him, the spell of the Cailliach:
and that she knew a _sian_ might ease him. With closed eyes and clasped
hands she repeated slowly:
"_An ainm an Athar, a Mhic,
'S an Spioraid Naoimh!
Paidir a h'aon,
Paidir a dha,
Paidir a tri,
Paidir a ceithir,
Paidir a coig,
Paidir a sea,
Paidir a seachd;
'S neart nan seachd padirean a' sgaoileadh do
Gholair air na clachan glas ud thall!_"
"_In the name of the Father,
The Son,
And the Holy Ghost:
By one prayer,
By two prayers,
By three prayers,
By four prayers,
By five prayers,
By six prayers,
By seven prayers;
And may the strength of the seven prayers
Cast out the ill that is in you
Upon the grey stones over there!_"[8]
[8] _Paidir_ is literally a _Pater_: _i. e._, a _Paternoster_, "Our
Father."
Long and earnestly she watched to see if the incantation would effect
the miracle. Nial trembled, with downcast eyes.
"Perhaps there is no evil in you, Nial," she whispered; "so now I will
pray to Himself for you, and you repeat what I say, and shut your eyes
and clasp your hands just as I do."
The soulless man and the child knelt side by side among the fern. The
light lay all about them as a benediction. The rising wind, with a wet
sough in it, came along the pines like an intoning anthem. Around them
the bee hummed unwitting; in a tree beyond them a cushat crooned and
crooned.
Oona's voice came low and sweet as the hidden dove's:
"_O Father,
That is the Father of the father of Sorcha and me,
I pray that you will give Nial a soul._"
Silence. Then a hoarse, sobbing voice:
"I pray that you will give Nial a soul!"
Then Oona again: and, again, Nial:
"_I pray that Nial may find his soul soon!_"
"I pray that Nial may find his soul soon!"
"_I pray that it will be a good soul!_"
"I pray that it will be a good soul!"
"_I pray that it may have yellow hair and blue eyes!_"
"I pray that it may have yellow hair and blue eyes!"
"_I pray that father and Sorcha and Alan and Murdo,
And that Donn and Fionn, the collies, and the kye,
And the sheep, and--and--everything--
Will love Nial!_"
"That everything will love Nial!"
"_And that Nial will go to Heaven too!_"
"And that Nial will go to Heaven too!"
"_And this is the prayer of Oona,
The daughter of Torcall Cameron
Who lives at Màm-Gorm on Iolair,
An ainm an Athar, a Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh!_"
"An ainm an Athar, a Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh!"
Oona opened her eyes, looked earnestly at Nial, leant forward and kissed
him.
"Now, Nial, rise, and turn sunways, and cry _Deasìul_."
The dwarf did as she bade; then, with a happy laugh, she slipped her
hand in his.
"Let us go back now. The rain is coming."
And so, as the glooms of storm came rapidly over the mountain, the two
moved, silent and happy, through the sighing glades of the forest.
* * * * *
Lowering skies, with the floating odour of coming rain, already dulled
the hill-land. A raven, flying athwart Iolair, looked larger than its
wont. Its occasional croak fell heavily as though from ledge to ledge of
weighty air. The wood-doves which flew back toward the forest winged
their way at a lower level than usual, the clamour of their pinions
beating the atmosphere as with oars: on the moorland the lapwings rose
and fell incessantly with wailing cries. The scattered kye lowed
uneasily, or stood below solitary rowans or wild-guins, easing their
fly-tormented flanks with their swishing tails. On the farther slopes,
the querulous lambs bleated: everywhere the incessant calling of the
ewes made a mournful rumour. The wind moved with a heavy lift, here
rising, here falling, anon whirling upon itself, so that all the fern
and undergrowth in the corries bent one way, or, for a league, the
spires of the heather whitened.
High and low, the innumerous hum of insects vibrated on the air. Thus
may the hum of the wheeling world be heard of Keithoir, who dreams in
the hollow of a green hill unknown of man: or of the ancient goddess
Orchil, who, blind and dumb, works in silence at the heart of Earth at
her loom Change, with the thridding shuttles Life and Death: or of
Manannan, who sleeps under the green wave, hearing only the sigh of the
past, the moan of the passing, the rune of what is to come.
Before Oona and Nial drew close to the hill farm, a shrill sustained
cry, not unlike that of the bird called the oyster catcher, came along
the slopes. Oona knew at once it was Sorcha's summons for her to help
with the cows. With a whispered word to her comrade she sped away by a
sheep-path that wound over against Maol-Gorm. Nial slowly advanced to
the green hillock of Cnoc-na-shee. He had just flung himself wearily on
the grassy slope, when he saw Torcall Cameron stoop and issue from his
low doorway.
Màm-Gorm faced the way of the wind, sniffed the air with sensitive
nostrils, and let his blind eyes feel the balm of the damp. Then he
turned, and returned to his seat by the fire. Nial watched for an hour.
The wind had a steady sough in it, and the clouds were lower, darker,
more voluminously vast and swift when Cameron came forth again.
* * * * *
It was this time that he had his staff in his hand, though no cap
covered his tangled iron-grey hair.
Nial hoped he was right in believing that Màm-Gorm had come out merely
to breathe the caller air: for the dwarf feared the reproach of Sorcha
if he let the blind man wander along the perilous moorland, with wind
and rain moving like ravenous hounds adown the heights.
When, however, he realised that Torcall Cameron was bent upon making his
way to some distant spot, he had not the courage to check him, or even
to make known his presence. There was a thundercloud on the man's face,
one that to Nial was far more sombre and terrifying than any overhead.
When, with slow, hesitating steps, the blind man passed close to
Cnoc-na-shee, he stopped for a few moments. Doubtless he was listening
to the wind going through the pines, with a noise as of the flowing tide
against shingly beaches: or, perhaps, to the scattered lowing and
bleating of his sheep and cows. But Nial feared that, in some strange
way, he had perceived him. He trembled, for he knew that "the father"
was in one of his dark moods. Deep down in his heart he dreaded the gaze
of those sightless eyes more than anything else in the world: in his
heart of hearts he was convinced that they saw, more awfully and
searchingly because through a veil.
In his anxiety not to betray his presence, he ground his foot firmer
into a heathy hollow, for he had slightly slipped when Cameron stopped.
A pebble was dislodged, and made a slight noise.
The blind man lifted his head, startled.
"Is any one there?"
No answer. The wind sighed along the grass.
"Oona, are you there? Nial, is that you?"
Silence, but for a faint wind-rustle in the bracken.
"_Sst! Down, Luath, Fior!_"
But no collie barked or whined in response.
"Well, peace to your soul, and go hence."
But at last Torcall was convinced he was alone, for he heard the note of
a yellow-hammer, as it fed its mate, close by. With a sigh he moved on.
As he passed within a few yards of Nial, the dwarf heard him muttering
disconnected phrases: "Ochan-achone, tha m' anam brùite am chom!" ...
"ma tha sin an dàn!" ... "ma shìneas Dia mo làithean!"[9]
[9] "Alas, my soul is oppressed within me!" ... "if it be
ordained!" ... "if God prolong my days!"
He waited till Cameron was some way ahead. Then with light step,
stealthy movement, and furtive sidelong glances, he followed.
The first thin rain slanted along the wind. The blind man paid no heed.
Indeed, he now walked swiftly and firmly along a sheep-path, as though
he were familiar with the way, or had altogether forgotten his
infirmity.
Out upon a bleak stretch of moor on one of the higher slopes of
Maol-Donn stood a cairn. It was here, so rumour went, though none knew
for sure, that Torcall's wife, Marsail, lay buried. It was known that
she had perished in a snowstorm, and that he had insisted on her burial
where she was found: but when the minister and the people came for her
body they were told that she was already in the mools, and that even now
the stones of her cairn were upon her.
Beside it was a tall flat slab of rock. It may have been part of a
Pictish or Druidic temple, or its resemblance to a sacred stone may
have been accidental. It stood erect, one-third imbedded in the
hillside.
To these Torcall Cameron now made his way. At the cairn he did not stop,
neither did he drop a stone or even a pebble upon it. When he reached
the great rock, he leaned against it, and with folded arms stared
sightlessly across the strath to Tornideon, whose vast bulk rose sombre
in the deepening gloom.
The wail of the wind momently increased. The rocks sweated, even where
there was no rain falling.
Suddenly, over the high crest to the west, the Druim-nan-Damh or Ridge
of the Stags, there came a heavy rolling sound as though a mass of
boulders had fallen down the far side of Iolair.
This first muttering of the thunder aroused the dreamer. He started,
checked some exclamation, and then, having stooped and groped till he
found what he wanted, threw a small stone on Marsail's cairn.
Nial drew closer. A flash of lightning had frightened him. Thunder and
lightning were to him as direct agents of a vengeful and irate Power as
they were to the priests and prophets of old.
The first loud crash filled the air. Then ensued a splitting and
rending as of a granite mountain, from whose depths vomited a prolonged
howling and roaring as of monstrous beasts. The outcast crawled
alongside the tall slab against which the man leaned, and gripped a
corner with his hand.
When, his white face glimmering in the mirk, he looked up at Màm-Gorm,
he shivered with a new dread.
The blind man stood erect, with arms upraised and hands outspread. His
face was lit as though a fire burned in his brain. Nial imagined that
the dead eyes gleamed, as he had seen toadstools gleam in a dark cave: a
dull phosphorescent light, horrible to look upon.
Again a wuthering roar, followed by a scythelike whirlwind, with the
sound of rain-torrents flooding the high corries and washing the
windward precipices of Ben Iolair. Nial was about to speak, when he
crouched back at the volley of words shouted savagely over his head:
"Oh, my Lord God, strike! Oh, let Death be upon me! Sorrow Thou hast
given me, and I have not rebelled: grief Thou hast made my daily
portion, and I have not rebuked Thee: but now that Thou hast made my day
into a charnel-house and my bed into a grave, now that Thou hast
brought before my blind eyes what no eyes may see and live, now that
Thou hast set the Dead as a watch upon the living--I cry to Thee,
Enough!"
Nial shivered with awe and terror. He saw that a frenzy was upon the man
whom he both loved and feared.
There was silence for many seconds. A greenish streak of flame shot
across the mountain, intolerably vivid. A sound as of mirthless laughter
was drowned in an avalanche-roar overhead. Out of the tumult, later,
came wild fragments of human shouting:
"Let there be a duel between us then ... ay, Marsail, you may weep; ay,
Fergus, you may leap out of your shroud to be soul to soul with me ...
what do I care for the hounds of the night?... Call off thy hounds, O
Hunter!... Be the day between us, and the night, O God; and the two
noons, and the darkness of the coming and the darkness of the going; and
the blood of the living, and the corruption of the dead; and the earth
and the sea; and the stars beneath the world, and the stars above the
world; and the friend of man that is Time, and Thy friend that is
Eternity ... for I _will_ not, I _will_ not, I _will_ not ... no, though
I perish for ever and for ever" ... (_and at last, with a scream_) ...
"Go Thy ways, O God.... Leave me, if Thou wilt not slay! ... I _will_
not! I _will_ not! I _will_ not!"
When the next flash and thunderblast had hurtled and gone, Nial thought
that Death had indeed come. Then he heard a low whisper:
"What is it that I hear? Do the dead stir? Marsail ... Marsail ... or
... or ... is it _you_, Fergus, son of Fergus, son of Ian?"
Sick with fear, Nial sprang to his feet, seized one of the fallen hands
in his own, and tried to lead Màm-Gorm away.
The blind man shook as a tuft of canna in a wind-eddy; white, too, as
the canna, was his face.
His lips moved convulsively. At last, hoarse, choking, sobbing sounds
came forth, and from these grew three or four words:
"Is--it--_you_, Marsail?"
Nial shrank appalled, but could not withdraw his hands.
"Is--it--_you_, Fergus Gilchrist?"
Struggling to escape, he merely added to the paralysing awe which held
his captor.
"Who are you--what are you? Are you the thing of the grave, the black
guide I have heard of?"
With a sudden jerk the dwarf freed himself. The next moment he bounded
aside, then, without a glance behind him, fled.
Cameron sprang forward, but when he found that he had missed his grip he
drew up again, and stood listening intently. If it was a spirit, it made
a noise of running like a human: if it was a creature of the grave, it
hurried back to no hollow near by: if it was Black Donald himself, Sir
Diabhol had fled, affrighted!
Ah, the Cailliach! He had not thought of _her_! It might well be that
the demon-woman had tried to snare him. If so, what, who, had saved him?
Dazed and sick he stood for a moment, because of a crash of a
thunderbolt against a near height. The granite splintered like glass. In
his mouth his palate shrank: his nerves strained, quivering.
Who, what, hurled that thunderbolt? Was it God? Was He answering his
wild prayer?
If it were of God, why had it not stricken him? Hark! A scream far off!
Had the leaping Cailliach been slain by the lightning, as a flying man
by the spear of his pursuer? Had God given him these things as signs?
These voices, that awful touch as of human hands?
He bowed his head. Tears scalded the burning lids of his blind eyes.
Suddenly he sank to his knees, and with outstretched arms repeated an
ancient rune of his fathers, the Cry to Age, the Rann-an-h' Aoise:
O thou that on the hills and wastes of Night art Shepherd,
Whose folds are flameless moons and icy planets,
Whose darkling way is gloomed with ancient sorrows:
Whose breath lies white as snow upon the olden,
Whose sigh it is that furrows breasts grown milkless,
Whose weariness is in the loins of man
And is the barren stillness of the woman:
O thou whom all would 'scape and all must meet,
Thou that the Shadow art of Youth-Eternal,
The gloom that is the hush'd air of the Grave,
The sigh that is between last parted love,
The light for aye withdrawing from weary eyes,
The tide from stricken hearts for ever ebbing!
O thou, the Elder Brother whom none loveth,
Whom all men hail with reverence or mocking,
Who broodeth on the peaks of herbless summits,
Yet dreamest in the eyes of babes and children:
Thou, Shadow of the Heart, the Brain, the Life,
Who art that dusk _What is_ that is already _Has been_,
To thee this rune of the-fathers-to-the-sons,
And of the sons to the sons, and mothers to new mothers--
To thee who art _Aois_,
To thee who art _Age_!
Breathe thy frosty breath upon my hair, for I am weary;
Lay thy frozen hand upon my bones that they support not,
Put thy chill upon the blood that it sustain not,
Place the crown of thy fulfilling on my forehead,
Throw the silence of thy spirit on my spirit,
Lay the balm and benediction of thy mercy
On the brain-throb and the heart-pulse and the life-spring--
For thy child that bows his head is weary,
For thy child that bows his head is weary.
I the shadow am that seeks the Darkness.
Age, that hath the face of Night unstarr'd and moonless,
Age that doth extinguish star and planet,
Moon and sun and all the fiery worlds,
Give me now thy darkness and thy silence!
It was there, lying with his face in the wet heather, that Sorcha found
her father. She had seen Nial flying as for his life, and, from behind
the boulder where she was sheltering a lamb, had sprung forward to stop
him. But all the elf-man saw was a woman's figure--perhaps the Cailliach
who had already stolen his soul and now wanted his body in this night of
storm! With a scream he turned aside and dashed onward in his wild,
ungainly flight.
Sorcha's great eyes filled with amazement, then with dread. What did it
mean? Her bosom heaved, the swell of the sudden tide at her heart. More
beautiful than any Fairy-Woman that ever herded the deer or sang a
fatal song, she stood with one hand at her breast, the colour ebbing
from her face, her slim firm body poised as an intent stag.
Slowly her gaze travelled back the way Nial had come. In the gloom of
storm she could descry nothing, no one. If the Cailliach were there, she
was now invisible.
Again an almost intolerably vivid flash of blue-green light, out of a
dazzling flame that seemed to burst from the hills. The hollow roar and
crash that followed dazed her, but in that moment's illumination she had
seen the cairn and the stannin' stane, and, beside them, the figure of
her father, apparently stricken and fallen prone.
Without a thought of fear, either of the storm or the evil spirit that
might be roaming the hillside, she half ran, half clambered upward till
she came upon her father lying low. In a moment she was by his side, and
had lifted his head, drying his face with her dress, and kissing him,
with a crooning as of a mother over her child.
He was not dead. For that she was thankful. She could feel the throb of
his heart, and in his throat there was a sound as of sobbing breath.
"Father, father," she cried; then, whispering in his ear, "Father of
me, father of me, oh, dear to my heart, all is well! I am Sorcha! There
is no evil thing here. Come home! Come home!"
She felt the shiver that went over him. Then he sought with his hand,
and clasped that which went to meet it.
"What is it, Sorcha? Where am I?"
"Ah, father, dear father, you are well now: arise: I will lead you
home!"
"Home?"
"Yes; do you not hear the wind and the rain? _Ah--h--!_"
Again a bursting roar overhead, and the whole of Iolair a beacon of
flame whereon every boulder and crag stood out clear as in brilliant
moonlight.
"I remember! I remember!" Cameron cried, as he staggered to his feet.
"Was it _you_, Sorcha, who took my hands a little ago, when--when--I was
speaking to--to--Marsail?..."
The girl recoiled in horror. Marsail ... her long-dead mother!
"What is this thing that you say, O Torcall MacDiarmid?" she whispered,
awestruck.
"It is nothing. I was dreaming. Sorcha, I came here dreaming of past
days. Your mother lies below the cairn there. I was talking to her to
ease my pain. I thought she might hear. And while I spoke, I felt hands
clasp mine, and try to pull me down--below the cairn, it may be! And
then I fell into a horror, and the darkness came over my mind. And,
suddenly, I knew that God spared me, though I had cursed Him, and I fell
on my knees and cried the rune of Age, that is a rune of old, forgotten
among our people, and therewith I was heard, and my strength knew the
Breath, and I fell as you found me."
"But, father, father, you are not in the dark way--you are not old, for
all the grey of your hair--you are not going to die, and leave your
Sorcha and Oona?"
"Would you have me live, _nic-chridhe_?"
Seldom did he speak to her thus, though often he called Oona his heart's
dearie and other loving names. The tears came to her eyes.
"Yes, yes, father! I would have you live. I love you."
"My age is come upon me. I am weary."
"Not yet: not yet!"
"Do you not know the wisdom of old--_s'mairg a dh'iarradh an aoise, Woe
to him that desireth extreme old age!_"
"Come with me, dear! Come! The rain is leaping at us. Come! You are
cold and wet and shivering!"
And so, at last, silent and weary, Torcall Cameron toiled back against
the tempest, and neither he nor Sorcha saw, as they passed the byre, a
squat, misshapen figure crouching beside Odhar, the calving cow.
* * * * *
It was a night for the peat-glow. Outside, the darkness was intense. The
thunderstorm had rolled heavily away, though the far hills still held an
echo. But a great wind had arisen, and blew across the heights with a
sound like the trumpets of a mighty host. From the forest came a vast
tumultuous sigh, as of the moaning sea.
In the low room, where there was no light save that of the peat-fire,
upon which flamed some dry pine-logs, Torcall Cameron sat brooding in
the ingle. Opposite to him was Sorcha on a milking-stool, now stirring
the porridge in the pot at one side of the fire, now with clasped hands
staring into the flames, dreaming of Alan, or of what she had that
gloaming heard from her father and from Nial.
At dark she had gone to the byre, and, having found the dwarf, had
soothed and entreated him, so that his dark mood passed, and he
followed her, in furtive silence, into the room, where, unknowing of his
advent, Màm-Gorm sat.
Only once had the blind man spoken since he had seated himself once
again before the peats. It was to ask Sorcha if she thought that the
person who took his hands by the cairn could have been Nial. An
imploring glance from the outcast made her refrain from betrayal of his
presence: of which she was glad when, having replied that she was
certain it was he, for she had seen him running down the hillside as
though terrified by the lightning, her father broke into a muttered
savage curse.
At last Màm-Gorm slept. The fireglow calmed the wrought face. The
tangled iron-grey hair fell over his forehead. He looked strangely old;
could it be, thought Sorcha, that his prayer had been heard, and that
already the Shepherd had found this weary sheep? And yet, so strong was
he, so tall and strong; strong as an aged pine on a headland! Surely his
ill was of the stricken heart only?
When his breathing came soft and even, she rose, lightly kissed his grey
hair, with a tear for the pity of the old that is in the loving heart of
the young, and then went out to the byre to see if Odhar was warm, and
under no spell nor evil, though her calf was not yet due.
As she went out Oona slipped in. She was dry and flushed, for at the
coming of the storm she had crept into the hayloft, and had there been
lulled to sleep by the rush of the rain and the endless rising and
falling sough of the wind. Nial made a sign of silence, so she came
forward soundlessly. For a time she stared intently at the sleeper,
then, seeing that Nial, who had crawled to her side, would not look at
her but sat blinking at the flame, she began to croon a song.
The sweet Gaelic words fell from her lips like soft rain in a wood. The
room was filled with a low chime of music. Old strange chants or
fugitive songs, one after the other, came fragmentarily to her lips; and
the plaintive air of them was sometimes her own, sometimes what she had
heard others sing, and once or twice old-world melodies, more ancient
than the oldest pine-trees, older even than the "fallen stones" in the
place on the south slope of Iolair called Teampull-nan-Anait, where a
thousand years ago none passed who could tell who Anait was, or where
her altar had been or who were her worshippers.
Once the door opened. Sorcha glanced through the flame-lit dusk: a
smile on her face, sweet as the dream in her beautiful eyes. The father
asleep; Oona crooning before the peats; Nial, quiet hound of Oona, with
dark eyes staring up at her from where he lay on the floor: she need not
fear to leave, and go out to the roofed hay-room, where Alan's arms
yearned for her, where his heart beat for her, where his lips were warm
in the dark, where the dear whisper of his voice was the echo of the
white song that clapped its hands rejoicing in the sunbower in the
hollow of her heart.